Examining strategies to increase student evaluation of teaching completion rates

Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) can provide valuable assessment information. However, online administration of SETs has corresponded with lower SET completion rates. We examined perceptions of strategies for increasing SET completion rates and the effect of offering psychological prompts (completion goals, reminders, progress feedback) and micro-incentives (-extra credit that has a negligible effect on student grades) on SET completion rates, grades, and student evaluations. Study one (N = 469 instructors) revealed that instructors who used incentive-based strategies (compared with instructors who did not) rated such strategies as more ethical and more effective, and reported greater likelihood of using incentive-based strategies in the future. Examination of student records revealed higher SET completion rates among instructors who offered micro-incentives than among instructors who did not. In Study two (N = 36 instructors), we randomly assigned instructors to one of three conditions: psychological prompts, micro-incentives plus prompts, or a no-information standard-practice control condition. SET completion rates were lowest in the control condition (53.9%), followed by the prompts (64.5%) and micro-incentives plus prompts (79.7%) conditions. The two experimental conditions did not differ in completion rates, but only micro-incentives differed significantly from the control. These results demonstrate that prompts and incentives are promising methods for increasing SET completion rates.

Keywords:

• SET
• micro-incentives
• completion rates
• evaluations
• teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an IDEA Impact Grant.

Notes on contributors

Nikolette Lipsey

Nikolette P. Lipsey is a postdoctoral research scholar at North Carolina State University. Through all of her lines of research, her aim is to better understand how people make decisions about potentially threatening information, and how people factor others into those decisions.

James Shepperd

James A. Shepperd is a professor of psychology at the University of Florida with expertise in social and health psychology. His research primarily examines judgment and decision making in the face of threat.